Michel Platini delivered an uncompromising message yesterday to clubs in the Premier League and around Europe that continue to overspend in the chase for football's top prizes. If they fail to live within their means, beginning next season under Uefa's newly-introduced "financial fair play" rules, they will be excluded from the Champions League and Europa League.

Speaking in Monaco, where senior figures from Europe's top clubs were gathered for last night's Champions League draw, the Uefa president said the rules, designed to introduce financial responsibility, are clear: "The clubs will comply," he said, "or they will not play."

Asked whether he had wielded that threat when the rules were being negotiated, telling Premier League clubs, in particular, that "financial fair play" was coming and they would not play in Uefa competitions unless they agreed, Platini nodded: "Yes," he said, before emphasising that ultimately he secured almost unanimous agreement across Europe. "All the clubs were in favour. The biggest clubs were in favour because their owners do not want to keep overspending. And the smaller clubs realised it was good for them, too."

Platini's flamboyance, his turn of a choice phrase about football's beauty or enduring human values, has meant the former France playmaker's tactical shrewdness, and preparedness to be tough, have mostly been overlooked.

The rules for which he secured wholesale backing are designed to move clubs towards breaking even from as early as next season, 2011-12. As an initial compromise, clubs will be allowed to record maximum total losses over the following three years of €45m (£36.8m). That can be subsidised by an owner – a sugar daddy, as Platini does not shy away from describing backers such as City's Sheikh Mansour or Chelsea's Roman Abramovich – but only if they invest the money permanently in return for shares, not by lending it. From 2014 to 2017, that overall permitted loss will fall to €30m. After that, Uefa hopes clubs will have learned financial balance, pulled back from the relentless inflation of players' wages, and be genuinely breaking even.

Uefa's general-secretary, Gianni Infantino, confirmed that Platini had played hardball in ensuring the rules were introduced. Infantino explained that now, if Manchester United's massive interest payments continue to push them into losses, or if Manchester City qualify for the Champions League courtesy only of vast overspending, they will ultimately be excluded from European competitions.

"There may be intermediate measures," he said. "We would have to ask why, maybe there would be a warning first, but certainly, we would have to bar clubs in breach of the rules from playing in the Champions League or the Europa League. Otherwise, we lose all credibility."

That credibility, the very fact Uefa can point to Europe-wide rules that must be followed, is the hard-won fruit of Platini's presidency. Almost immediately from when he was elected Uefa president in January 2007, the first former great player to graduate to a position of such influence, Platini, pictured right, has been outspoken about the "rampant commercialism" he said was "assailing" the game; about the mission, as he put it, "to protect football from business".

Almost three years on, and with his re-election next year all but guaranteed, his tone was markedly less rhetorical and combative. Flanked by Infantino and the unmistakeable Pierluigi Collina, recently appointed Uefa's chief refereeing officer with a brief to oversee wholesale improvement, Platini came over almost administrative. Declining invitations to criticise Premier League, Spanish or Italian clubs' debts and losses, not beating his breast about football's threatened soul, Platini referred simply and repeatedly to the rules, and that they must now be obeyed.

That is his achievement – that as an administrator, the former three times European Footballer of the Year and French national coach converted his heartfelt views into solid reforms.

"Four years ago we were in total anarchy in the way that clubs were spending money," he said. "Now the rules are there and the clubs will have to follow them. They are not stupid, they will comply."

Platini has always said the owners themselves, including Abramovich, wanted the measures, as they stared at subsidising overspending for years ahead. "They asked for the rules," Platini said yesterday, "because they could not do this [break even] themselves."

When asked if he understood how far away Europe's clubs are from breaking even – 14 of the 20 Premier League clubs made losses in 2008-09; La Liga clubs racked up €3bn debts – Platini and Infantino sounded optimistic notes. They point to Chelsea restraining their spending, rather than Mansour's millions supporting City's huge losses in assembling Roberto Mancini's all-star squad. "The clubs are pulling their socks up," Platini asserted. "They know exactly what they have to do and are making a real effort to comply."

It is when talking football, about the game itself, that Platini comes alive. Collina will oversee the new system of two additional assistant referees officiating in Uefa competitions, another Platini brainchild. He defended the innovation yesterday, rejecting technology as unworkable despite all five officials having missed Jermain Defoe's handball in Tottenham Hotspur's 4-0 defeat of Young Boys on Wednesday night. A traditionalist in this as in other areas, Platini argues the extra officials, patrolling the goallines to police infringements in the penalty areas and observe whether a ball has crossed the line, will help decisions to be right in "99 or 100% of cases". If a referee cannot achieve that, he said, he should stop refereeing. "There should be near-zero tolerance with regard to referees because they should see everything now."

Platini hopes this system, which looks unwieldy to many, will prove another solid legacy of his presidency, another protection for the soul and integrity of football.

Relaxing a little, he recalled that in his first administrative role, as a member of a Fifa task force 20 years ago, he came forward with the idea of banning goalkeepers from handling back passes, which has since improved the flow of the game. "See," he said, "I have done many things for the good of football." Then he laughed, and some of the sparkle returned.